From Okada Books to PiggyVest: Martha Kingsmike wants 9-5ers to work like they own a startup

Swipe away on Martha Kingsmike’s Instagram stories, and you might catch her mid-workout—legs splayed in a precarious split, stretching before or after a grueling gym session. You hold your breath, half-expecting her legs to buckle. They don’t. Spend two hours talking to her, and it’s clear: that’s how she lives—pushing her boundaries, testing her limits.

Take 2024, when she juggled three jobs like a high-wire act: full-time product marketing associate at PiggyVest, Nigeria’s fintech darling; social media consultant for GoLemon, a fast-rising grocery delivery startup; and a five-month audience engagement contract with openDemocracy. By the end, she was running on fumes, but the quality of her work never suffered, she claimed. When I ask what fuels this relentless multitasking, she says, “Passion and money.” 

The openDemocracy contract, now mercifully over, outpaid her full-time gig at PiggyVest at the time, but it was dull. PiggyVest, on the other hand, keeps her sharp and on her toes. She’s either turning the chief marketing officer’s scattered sparks of ideas into full-blown strategies, chasing down designers to keep content on schedule, or crafting high-stakes influencer campaigns—all while ensuring PiggyVest’s online persona stays witty yet safe, never spooking users who have millions saved on the savings platform.

Meanwhile, at GoLemon, she gets to play. The budding startup lets her audience engagement strategies lean into the chaotic humour that would be risky at PiggyVest but stimulating for shoppers. It also allows her to experiment more without the bureaucracy typical of late-stage startups. One night, in an ADHD-fueled sprint, she shot 30 videos for a 30-day challenge—and reach increased sevenfold.

With nine years of marketing and audience engagement under her belt, Kingsmike has built a reputation that keeps job offers rolling in, all of which she has been declining in the past year. 

“I’m not being cocky or anything,” she says during our virtual interview, “but I’m great at what I do.” 

In her LinkedIn header, she describes herself as “superhuman.” But she wasn’t always this confident.

Founder mode

Kingsmike began her career at Okada Books, a now-defunct digital publishing startup, landing an internship after university. With a literature background and experience promoting her own blog, the content marketing role suited her perfectly. The CEO called 30 minutes after she applied, offering a higher position due to her strong resume, but lacking formal experience beyond a one-off gig, she chose the content marketing internship instead. Nonetheless, three weeks in, she was promoted, and three months later, the then-five-year-old startup started facing serious challenges.

Launched in 2013, Okada Books disrupted publishing with instant author payments and joined Google’s 2018 Launchpad Accelerator alongside PiggyVest (then PiggyBank, where Kingsmike now works) and three other Nigerian startups. As at the time she joined, key staff members, like the social media manager, were quitting without replacements. Kingsmike stepped up, learning on the fly and leaning on teammates to fill  technical gaps necessary to keep the content marketing machine running. 

“I’m not the type of person to come into a company and just do my job. I try my hands at everything. I’m like a sponge—I absorb everything around me,” she said. 

This high agency mentality is one many in the tech ecosystem describe as ‘founder mode’—operating with the intensity, adaptability, and problem-solving drive of a startup founder—to get things done.

By late 2019, exhausted and dissatisfied, Kingsmike left Okada Books. 

“I thought maybe it’d get better or I wanted better pay, but it wasn’t about the salary—I knew it was time to go.” 

Kingsmike joined Big Cabal Media shortly after, where she worked to boost its online presence, balancing humorous audience engagement with credibility. After three years, having worked across both TechCabal and its sister publication, Zikoko, she moved on again when the role no longer inspired her.

Growing with Piggyvest

In search of a bigger challenge, Kingsmike took up an audience engagement management role at Pocket, a fintech platform acquired by PiggyVest. 

“It opened me up to a whole new world of fintech where things hardly stayed the same and where I could move out of my bubble to gain insight into how consumers actually behave with money,” she said. 

Like her time at Okada Books, she arrived during a period of transformation. Pocket, a recent acquisition of Piggyvest, initially built as a social payments app, was evolving, and so was her role. Though hired as an audience engagement manager, as the platform shifted, she transitioned into product marketing. 

When her team lead left, Kingsmike filled the gap just as she had done at Okada Books, saying she “had to keep the team in rhythm and make sure we stayed on track.” 

This ownership mindset has defined her career and has transformed her from a believer in switching jobs every few years into someone who now sees the value of growing within a great company.

“I saw someone on LinkedIn who started working at Microsoft in 2001. They’ve had 15 roles, but they’re still there. That made me think: Just find a good company, stick there, and grow. I think I’ve found that at PiggyVest.”

While a few startups, including the Stripe-owned Paystack, have gained attention for high employee retention, high churn is more common, driven by layoffs, shutdowns, toxic work culture, and more. The idea of spending half a decade in a company you have no equity in is almost radical in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, where job-hopping isn’t just ambition but survival.

Kingsmike acknowledges her privilege. 

“It’s sad how lucky a hardworking person has to be to find a place where they can work for a long time,” she said on a call. 

However, she believes there are indicators for spotting such companies: a thoughtful evaluation can show whether a company fosters an environment where high-performing people thrive.

“You don’t have to wait until you’re employed to figure out a company’s growth trajectory,” she explained. “My research on PiggyVest, [before joining the company] showed that many mid- and high-level employees started as interns. Some began in one department and later moved and grew into another.” 

She believes these could signal the ambition of a startup and how much growth opportunities a company can provide its staff.

But it is not all roses at the fintech, Kingsmike acknowledges. She recalls having to deal with high-stress situations often. Recently, during PiggyVest’s December 2024 campaigns, Kingsmike juggled multiple activations and social listening sessions while ensuring her team stayed motivated through the season’s chaos. Managing a team, there is hardly room to check out, she says. 

She’s learned to take breaks when she can, to pace herself and care for her mental health but the reality is that the work never really stops.

“It’s scary but exciting. I love it,” she said, beaming.